'The Enemy Is Dead': Russia Reacts to U.S. Senator John McCain’s Passing

John McCain (Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0))

John McCain, the chairman of the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, who served as a senator from Arizona for more than three decades, died on Saturday at the age of 81.

While U.S. and world leaders mourned the death of the longtime critic of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Russian policymakers and media personalities openly criticized the late senator for his anti-Kremlin views.

“Mr. McCain was always an American patriot. Unfortunately, however, the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ had affected him all his life… He was an outspoken Russophobe over the past decades. Not only did he simply dislike our country, but he in fact hated it. Peace be upon him.”

“His only ideology was to ‘defend your own and attack others,’ where the only criterion was loyalty to America and American interests, and not the criteria of peace, good and justice.”

“In that sense, McCain reflected the era in which he grew up and became a politician. An era of dividing the world into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ A ‘Cold War’ era in which our country was and remained his principle enemy.”